"How much?--my dear, your father was living at the rate of four or five thousand a year!"

"Four _thousand_!" This at least was a help to a clear understanding.

Four thousand did stand out in sharp contrast to three hundred. Salome was speechless.

"Your Aunt Anna will be calling on your mother to-morrow, and she will settle about your coming to see your cousins. You must be about Kate's age--seventeen."

"I am not quite sixteen," Salome said. "Ada is just fifteen, and Raymond seventeen. Reginald is nearly fourteen."

"Only a year between each of you, then!"

"The little ones are much younger. Carl is nine, and Hans eight. They were born on the same day of the month."

Family records of births and ages were not in Dr. Wilton's line. He looked at his watch, and said,--

"Well, I must be off. I will speak to your mother about the situation for Raymond, and other matters, as we drive up from the station.

Good-bye, my dear." And Dr. Wilton was gone, leaving Salome standing in the middle of the room. She would have liked to kiss him, to cry a little, and be comforted. But there was something in her uncle's professional manner, kind though it was, which threw her back. He would do his duty, she felt; he would not give up his brother's children; but he would do it as shortly as possible, and waste neither time nor words over it.

He had smiled, and looked kind; he had spoken pleasantly and cheerfully; he had even put his arm round her when she first went into the room, and there was real feeling in the words, "Well, my dear child," as he kissed her forehead; but for all that, Salome felt like a sensitive plant, touched by the gentlest hand, which draws in, and cannot unfold in response.

"If only father were here!" the girl exclaimed, covering her face with her hands. "Oh, that he were here! Oh, that we had all thought more of him when we had him! And what a life he must have had the last year; never telling us, and yet in such trouble!" Vain regrets for our dead; vain longings to be what we can never be again! Let us all take care, as the daily life rolls swiftly on, that we lay up happy memories, or at least pleasant memories, when that daily life has become _the past_,--the past which, when it was the present, was, alas! so often sown with the seeds of unkindness, harshness of word and judgment, ill-temper, selfish disregard for the feelings of others, which yield such a bitter harvest when those we love are hidden from our sight, and we can never more lighten a burden, or help to make the way easy by smiles and good-temper, by tenderness and forbearance, by the love which covereth a mult.i.tude of faults.

Salome was roused by Raymond's entrance.

"Why did you not come and see Uncle Loftus?"

"He did not ask for me."

"Yes, he asked where you were; but he told me not to call you."

"I did not want to see him. I hate his patronizing ways. Have you found your purse?"

"Yes, Reg had picked it up; but you are not going out before dinner, are you, Ray?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Raymond, stretching and yawning. "I should have thought we had better have dined at seven, when mamma comes."

"I--I don't think Mrs. Pryor would like a late dinner."

"Well, I can get a little luncheon somewhere in Roxburgh. It is so fine, and it is so slow being cooped up here."

"You have to go with Reg to the Elm Fields Station to meet mamma--don't forget that--at five o'clock."

"All right." But Raymond lingered. "The money, Sal; I'll pay you back."

Salome opened the purse and took out two half-crowns. "Thanks!" said Raymond; "it _is_ a come down to want a paltry five shillings."

"O Raymond!" Salome said pa.s.sionately,--"O Ray, do try to make the best of things to mother! It will make her so dreadfully sad if you grumble.

Dear Raymond, I will do all I can, only please do try to make the best of everything."

"You are a kind little thing," said Raymond; "but I wish we were all at the bottom of the Red Sea. There is nothing left to live for or care about; no pleasure, and no fun; nothing but to be looked down upon!"

"I believe Uncle Loftus has heard of something for you, and perhaps you will make money and be a rich merchant." Raymond whistled and shrugged his shoulders, and strolled off, lighting a cigar in the porch.

Then Salome went to find Reginald, and make her peace with him.

"Reg, let us go out. It is so fine; and I am so sorry I was so careless about the purse. It was very good of you to pick it up, Reg; I was horridly cross to you."

"Never mind, Sal. Yes, let's go out and look about the place till dinner."

"I don't see that we want any dinner to-day, Reg. We can have the cutlets at tea, when the others come; and Stevens won't mind--she can have eggs and bacon. And we'll find a shop and have some buns and ginger-beer. I'll get ready at once, and tell Stevens to tell Mrs.

Pryor. It will be fun, and save expense, you know."

Poor child! she was soon ready; and Reginald and she set off in better spirits than they had known since their troubles had fallen on them.

When Salome was outside the gate, and had nodded to Ruth, who was behind the counter of the shop, she discovered she had got both left-hand gloves. "But it will spoil all if I tell Reg, and go back, and keep him waiting while I hunt for the right-hand glove. He will say I am incorrigible." So by a little skilful manoeuvring Salome persuaded her right hand to accommodate itself to circ.u.mstances, and tripped almost gaily by her brother's side.

CHAPTER VII.

COUSINS.

The walk had an exhilarating effect on both brother and sister. There is a charm in novelty to us all, and it is a charm which is more especially felt by the young. The present moment bears with it its own importance, and neither future nor past has the power with children that it has with grown-up people. Reginald and Salome soon left behind them the lines of small villas and long narrow streets intersecting each other which stretched out from the district called Elm Fields, connecting it with Roxburgh in one direction, and sloping down towards Harstone in the other.

Beyond all these signs of increasing population was a wide expanse of common or down, skirted, it is true, by houses which year by year are multiplied, but yet comprising an acre or two of broken ground with dips and hollows, and, again, wide s.p.a.ces of soft turf, freshened by the breezes which come straight from the mouth of the river on which Harstone stands, some ten miles away.

"This is nice," Salome said. "I feel as if I could run and jump here.

And look at that line of blue mountains, Reg! Is it not lovely? Oh, we can come here very often! I think I remember driving across these downs when I came with dear father to stay at Uncle Loftus's three or four years ago. We are nearer the downs than the fashionable part of the place, I believe."

"Yes," said Reginald; "I call this jolly. And there's the college over there; we will go home that way, and find out a short cut back to Elm Fields. I say, Sal, there is no one near, or no one who can watch us; let's have a race to the big thorn bush right in front, and on to the stumpy tree to the left."

Salome gave a quick glance round, and then said, "Off!" Away she went, fleet of foot, her plaits of hair falling over her shoulders, refusing to be kept in place by the hair-pins, which were indeed not strong enough to bear up that ma.s.s of tawny locks on ordinary occasions, certainly not now when Salome was flying in the teeth of a brisk wind over the open downs.

"Well done," said Reginald, breathless with his exertions, "you were not two yards behind me; but, I say, Sal, your hair!"

"Oh, what shall I do? and no pins! I must go back and look for them."

"Here's one caught in your jacket; but it would be like looking for a needle in a bundle of hay to look for the others on the down. No one will know you; let it all go."

"I will go to a hairdresser and have it cut off. It's no use being bothered like this. Now, let us walk quietly; I wish to consult you about my story. Shall I make the children orphans, living with a cross aunt? or shall they have a father and mother? And would you put in that tale about the monkey which Hans is so fond of? That is a really true tale, you know. It happened to Stevens's little niece."

"Well, I think stories about monkeys pulling watches to pieces and breaking tea-cups are rather stale. So are all stories, if you come to that--the same things told hundreds of times, just the names of the children changed."

Salome was silent, feeling rather disappointed at this douche of cold water over her schemes of authorship.

"But, Reg, if stories are to be like life, they _must_ be the same things told over and over again, just as things do go on happening over and over again. For instance, all that is happening to us now has happened to thousands and thousands of other families,--may be happening at this very moment. The thing is," said Salome thoughtfully, "it is the _way_ of telling a story which makes the difference. We see things differently, and then we put the old thing in a new light. That is why there is everything fresh every day, and nothing can be really stale, as you call it. All this beautiful view never can look quite the same, for there is certain to be a variety in the lights and shadows."

"Oh, well, I daresay; but then I am not sentimental or romantic, though I think you are awfully clever, and would beat Ada, or any of us, any day. I wonder how I shall get on at the college? It will be very different to Rugby. I must work hard and make the best of the year, for I am only to have a year more at school. Did not Uncle Loftus say so?"